Wednesday, 10 October 2018

Any Questions?

Have you ever spent Thursday night shouting in indignation
or exasperation at the telly? Then you've probablybeen watching another edition of Question Time. That programme has been
running for just over 39 years now and when David Dimbleby's tenure comes to
end this year he'll have been just the third regular host. However, that's
nothing compared to the programme that Question
Time is based on, radio's Any
Questions? This week this venerable
radio institution celebrates its 70th anniversary. It too is presented by a
Dimbleby, Jonathan in this case, who's the fourth incumbent in the role of
chairperson, and he's been in the job for 31 years.

To trace the programme's early history you have to go back
to the post-war days of the Home Service which was very much run on a regional
basis. The regions took programmes from the centre, what was known as the Basic
Home Service, and supplemented this with their own locally produced material
which may or may not have also gone on to enjoy a national audience.

Freddy Grisewood on the cover of the Radio Times
for the 10th anniversary in 1958

Head of the West Regional Programmes was Frank Gillard, at
the time best known to radio listeners as one of the team of War Correspondents
on the BBC's War Report.It was Gillard
that was instrumental in getting Any
Questions? on air and giving it the support to ensure that it was heard
across the BBC on the Light Programme and the full Home Service.

The programme had come about quite accidentally when in the
summer of 1948 the West region had been thinking about an inter-county quiz to
plug a gap in the winter schedule. The quiz idea was dropped in favour of a
kind of Brain's Trust but one that,
according to Gillard, was aimed at "the masses" and would have
"an audience of millions". He was keen to "get away from the
artificial atmosphere of the studio as much as possible and take the microphone
among the people."

Producer Michael Bowen looks back after the first ten years

An initial series of just six programmes was planned and the
inspiration for programme format came from another touring programme that had
started in 1947 called Speak Your Mind
in which chairman Gordon McMurtrie put a number of questions (sent in by
listeners) to a representative audience in whatever town it was visiting.
Audience members were encouraged to express their views openly and
spontaneously at the microphone. Whereas Speak
Your Mind posed questions on "matters which can be usefully discussed
in terms of everyday experience and ordinary common sense" Any Questions? raised subjects
"upon which the ordinary listener feels he needs help and guidance of
expert opinion."

The first programme on 12 October 1948, came from the
Guildhall in Winchester, with a team consisting of Naomi Royde-Smith, the
novelist, who lived in the city, Honor Croome of The Economist, Jack Longland, then Chief Education Officer for
Dorset, and Hampshire-born John Arlott at that time a BBC talks producer. The
first question - from the Lady Mayor of Winchester - was "What effect
would it have if women were able to exert more power in professional politics
and diplomacy?"

The programme's second producer Michael Bowen, who worked on
the programme for 25 years, takes up the story:

In the wartime Brains
Trust (originally called Any
Questions?) the team had sat in the cosy isolation of a studio. That
evening in Winchester the presence of the audience and the fact that the team
was confronted by the questioners revitalised the formula in precisely the way
Frank Gillard had hoped, and he was sure they were on to a winner. At the end
of the half-hour, while the members of the team were thankfully sipping drinks
in the Mayor's Parlour, he was on the phone to the Radio Times printers, where the presses were already rolling, to
extend the next programme, a fortnight later, to forty-five minutes.

There was soon no more thought of a limit to six editions.
Frank's aim became more ambitious - to attract a mass audience and, by making
the programme as entertaining as possible, to set up a wave of conversation in
millions of homes where perhaps they wouldn't listen to conventional talks
programmes. The first producer was Nicholas Croker, and he and Frank had
eighteen months to develop and mould the programme in the comparative obscurity
of Regional broadcasting. It gradually became more topical - hints to the
audience that questions on current affairs were more likely to be selected than
purely general ones had their effect - and this became an important factor in
the programme's longevity. The number of politicians on the panel increased.
teams were gradually persuaded t discuss issues rather than deliver four
separate monologues. John Arlott appeared every week at this formative time,
and with his producer's instinct was able to help shape the discussion by his
own example. Jack Longland was also helpful.

In June 1950, the Friday evening broadcast moved on to the
Basic Home Service, heard all over the country. But the real breakthrough came
three months later on 22 September when Any
Questions? moved to the Light Programme, with a repeat on the Basic Home
Service on Tuesdays. Within quite a short time, sixteen million people were
regularly listening to the programme. Frank Gillard had got his mass audience.

Here's Frank Gillard talking about Any Questions? on the occasion of its 40th anniversary in
1988.

Radio Times article marking the 40th in 1988

The programme's first presenter, initially billed as the
"travelling question-master" was Freddie Grisewood. He'd been
broadcasting since the mid 1920's firstly as a singer and then joining the
staff of the BBC as an announcer and commentator in 1929. He presented hundreds
of programmes including The Kitchen Front
and The World Goes By during the War
and Those Were the Days, Victorian Album and Film Times post-war. For many years he was one of the BBC's tennis
commentators at Wimbledon, alongside Max Robertson and Dan Maskell on both
radio and TV. As well as touring with Any
Questions? he was also covering the country as the chairman of Gardeners' Question Time between 1953
and 1961.

Freddie's failing health in 1967 led the producers to search
around for a replacement. Bamber Gascoigne was considered - he was an occasional
panellist - before David Jacobs eventually took over in early 1968. John
Timpson replaced David in 1984 when producers wanted a sharper more
journalistic edge to proceedings.From
September 1987 Jonathan Dimbleby became the chairman, coming from a mainly ITV
current affairs background.

Panel for the 16 July 1982 programme: David Owen, Patricia Hewitt, chairman David Jacobs, Clare Francis
and John Hannam (Illustration by Richard Ansell for the Sunday Times Magazine)

There are extracts from Freddie's era on Any Questions? on the BBC Archive site.

These clips include some lively discussions during David and
John's tenure and the introduction to Jonathan's first appearance.

Radio 4 is marking the 70th anniversary with a special edition
this Friday evening. Coming live from the House of Commons the panel and the
audience are all aged 18 to 30.

And then on Saturday night Archive on 4 includes plenty of archive recordings and features a
discussion about the programme recorded in the Radio Theatre with a panel consisting
of Bonnie Greer, David Blunkett, Matthew Parris and Ann Widdecombe.

1 comment:

Of course, for the first twenty years or so 'Any Questions?' only ever came from venues in the old BBC West Region (basically the Westward-and-successors & HTV West areas plus most of the Southern-and-successors area) which, considering that it was broadcast throughout the UK, very much confirms the point often made about Reithianism - that it greatly over-represented rural areas relative to how much of the population had lived in them since long before broadcasting began, and greatly under-represented industrial areas relative to how much of the population lived in them by that time. This was the same reason why the likes of Granada & Yorkshire were typically ITV's strongest areas in the 1970s & 80s.

Keith Waterhouse mentioned this in his Mirror column about the disruption of the programme by demonstrators against Enoch Powell in 1976, when the standby music was still "Sir Roger de Coverley" - that he had long resented the rather cosy, Tory air of the programme, but now saw it as a lesser evil than the emerging militancy and extremism of New Left and New Right alike.

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About Me

Hailing originally from Hull and spending most of my life in East Yorkshire I'm now resident in France.
For over 30 years I've been interested in radio, tv and film and have an archive of off-air recordings and radio-related material.
I'm not the Andy Walmsley that designs sets or produces tv programmes.
Professionally I worked in Local Government.
My wife Val works for Beaux Villages Immobilier.